


don’t you dare

by no_mourners_no_funerals



Series: ineffable husbands [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angels and Demons, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fire, First Kiss, Hurt Crowley, M/M, Nightmares, PTSD, Post-Canon, Some crying, Voice Of God, after the burned shop, definitely not, emotionally, not dead Aziraphale, post-near-armaggedon, two days after nopocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-19 05:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19350313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/no_mourners_no_funerals/pseuds/no_mourners_no_funerals
Summary: Crowley lives with the memories.The choking smell of smoke.The cracking of burning books and shelves collapsing on themselves.The stinging ash and bright bursts of fire.The total and utter hopelessness as he screams his throat sore for his angel.Memories worth hundreds of years, gone in a blink.His angel, gone too, dead, not discorporated.Dead.No.Crowley slammed his fists into the table and cried out. The plants stilled in fear not far away but he payed them no attention.They were alive. Both of them.And the bookshop was whole.Then why it was so hard to remember it?





	don’t you dare

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah i know there are lots of fics with this trope but i needed to add something. 
> 
> In advance i warn you that I haven’t read the book yet cos the delivery is a bit late.  
> :)
> 
> IMPORTANT:  
> Italics - dreams/thoughts  
> Bold - the voice of god

**On the second night of the Rest of Their Lives, Crowley was getting drunk alone in his apartment. Well, had been getting drunk. Currently, almost ten hours later (about 2 PM), the demon was asleep on his living room table.**

_“Where are you?! I can’t find you, Aziraphale!”_

_The fire pressed at him from all sides, burning with a feeling long forgotten after the Fall._

_”For Heaven’s sake!”_

_Bright bursts of light blinded his sensitive eyes._

_”Someone killed my best friend!”_

_He sagged to his knees, the smoke choking him, stealing the breaths he technically shouldn’t need._

_”BASTARDS!”_

_He heard Hastur’s awfully grotesque laugh._

_Aziraphale’s face flashed in the fire._

_“It’s your fault.”_

_Crowley couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, his eyes burned like hell._

_Water streamed down his cheeks._

_Aziraphale’s voice once again reached his ears._

_“All your fault.”_

_”You misplaced the Antichrist.”_

_”You wanted to kill Adam.”_

_”Just shut up and die already.”_

_Darkness was slowly creeping at the edges of his vision, suffocating him, drowning him, both hot and freezing, hell and heaven, and Hastur was still laughing and Aziraphale was still talking with that-, that-, that accusing and hurt tone of voice that reminded him of the argument in the park._

_“There’s no our side. It’s over.”_

_”Your fault.”_

_”I don’t even like you.”_

_”We’re not friends.”_

_The darkness almost entirely drowned out the light of the fire._

_“How could you even for a moment hope that I could love you ba-”_

He jerked awake and yelled in distress, not caring about his surroundings or who heard or what he destroyed. His hands burned with hellfire as he slammed them into the table, his eyes shut to block out the horrible orange light. His plants trembled in fear. And then he was screaming, repeating that dream over and over in his head, his hands smashing the empty wine bottles to bits. He sagged into the floor, very much alike to the dream, and tore at his short hair in frustration, his throat sore from the screaming, sobs tearing at it and making it worse. 

_He’s dead._

_No._

_He’s alive and we stopped the Armaggedon._

_The fire consumed him._

_No, no, no! It wasn’t even hellfire!_

He slowly calmed himself down, the rational part of his mind slowly winning over the frantic, nightmare-and-PTSD-driven part. He tried to force himself to stand up, to see what he’d done, how much damage he made, but he couldn’t find the energy. He dropped onto the floor and curled into a trembling ball on his side, pathetic (in his mind) tears slowly strolling down. 

**It is worth noting that Crowley rarely cried. Precisely speaking, it happened only four times since the Creation of Angels. When Lucifer fell, when he himself fell, when he thought Aziraphale died in the fire and now, a day and a half after the End of the world.**

He stayed like that for a couple of minutes **(At least he thought it was minutes. Celestial beings can have trouble with keeping up with the construct of time in certain** **situations. In a human concept of time, Crowley was laying on the floor for two hours.)**  and was trying to mentally prepare himself to stand up when he heard the door open. 

_Oh shit._

_What was he doing here?_

There wasn’t time to miracle the mess away (and that had nothing at all with the fact that he felt so _drained_ inside. Nope. Nothing at all). He quickly scrambled to the chair and cast an illusion, covering the room. 

Just in time as Aziraphale walked in with a happy smile on his face, carrying two wine bottles and a small snake plant in his hands. 

 _Shit_.

Crowley smirked and leaned across the throne-ish chair, faking calmness. 

“Angel! Well, colour me surprised, what exploded for you to come here?”

 **Aziraphale** **made** **an** **expression** **that** **expressed**   **a**   **feeling generally connected to** **an** **eye** **roll. He couldn’t roll his eyes of course, it was considered rude.**

“Does something need to explode for me to visit my friend?” He miracled himself a chair. Crowley didn’t play at making meaningful expressions and just rolled his eyes.

_Shit, he forgot his sunglasses._

“Usually it’s me who comes to the bookshop.”

”We stopped the Armaggedon two days ago, I think there can’t be anything more unusual, my dear.”

Crowley snorted, inwardly still gathering himself after his... moment.

”Point made. Any reason for buying a snake plant? The subtext is kind of obvious.”

Aziraphale smiled kindly and opened the first vintage bottle of wine.

”I passed by the florist’s on my way here and I thought I’d buy another plant for you to terrorise. You should really stop treating them like that, dear.”

**The plants in the room beside them couldn’t agree more, but in fear of Crowley’s reaction they stayed unnaturally still.**

Crowley looked at his angel - _the_ angel, the demon’s subconscious corrected the author - with a raised eyebrow and accepted the wineglass that Zira passed to him. _Bad_ _idea_ , a voice in his head said. 

”You do know that I know that you managed to keep the gardener’s position at the Dowlings’ only by miracles?” He took a sip from his glass as Aziraphale blushed a bit and drank from his. “My plants grow on their own perfectly, that says something, angel.”

**Unknowingly to the demon, he still wasn’t entirely sober after the night of drinking. That greatly affected the illusion he casted. It shuddered a bit with the additional dose of alcohol.**

Aziraphale frowned slightly for a second, but the shudder was too small to notice.

"Yes, but they are also the most frightened plants on the planet."

"Oh, shut up, angel. At least they're nice."

**They took another sip of wine and the illusion shuddered again. This time, the angel noticed.**

Zira put his wineglass down.

"Something's wrong."

Crowley smirked at him, trying to pass as completely normal (well, as normal as a demon could be).

"What? No, angel, nothing's wrong, maybe you're just a bit paranoid."

But Aziraphale wasn't put off easily.

"There is some sort of... charm put on this room."

"What charm? C'mon angel, don't be stupid. I think I'd notice something like that in my own living room, for Somebody's sake."

The angel frowned and raised his hand, ignoring the demon completely.

"An illusion of sorts."

_Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!_

Crowley forced as much of his power into the illusion as he could, but when Aziraphale's hand sliced through the air it all ended up as a futile effort. The angel was much more sober than he was and not so exhausted. The illusion shattered.

_SHIT!_

Zira took a shaky breath. Crowley turned away before he could see his face. That's when he felt something on his back.

**Crowley was still tired after averting the Apocalypse-That-Didn't and the nightmare, the crying, the drinking and keeping up the illusion used the majority of his energy. In other words, he found himself with his wings snapping back from the ethereal plane. And a major nosebleed.**

Aziraphale went still for a while. Crowley stood up, trembling slightly, his back and wings still facing the angel.

"Crowley... dear... what happened here?"

A lot, that was obvious. The table had scorch marks all over it and was covered in tiny pieces of green glass. Some of the bits had red stains on them. Wine? Blood? Maybe both.

Crowley didn't answer. Aziraphale slowly stood up and reached out to the glass. He withdrew the hand as soon as it touched it. He looked at the demon.

"Crowley?"

"Ah, yes, I mean, no, nothing happened, perfectly normal that is." The demon's voice sounded a bit strangled. He still didn't turn around.

"Crowley."

"I'm telling you. It's. Nothing. Just an accident."

Aziraphale moved closer to his best friend.

"It doesn't look like an accident, my dear.

"Crowley.

"Look at me, Crowley, please."

The demon didn't react.

**Little did Aziraphale know that Crowley's mind was currently drowning in endless possibilities of how the next few moments will look like. Sometimes his imagination didn't help at all.**

Drops of thick red blood hit the floor in a steady tap. The angel carefully put his hand on Crowley’s shoulder. The demon stilled, much like his plants, and it took all of his remaining strength not to flinch. 

“You’re bleeding, dear. Please let me see your face.”

Aziraphale slowly moved past the fallen angel’s beautiful black wings. Crowley moved his face away. 

“Crowley, please.”

The angel carefully raised his hand to grip lightly at the demon’s jaw. He pushed Crowley’s face towards himself. 

Aziraphale breathed out. The demon wouldn’t meet his eyes.

 **No** **wonder** **that** **Crowley** **didn’t** **want** **the** **angel** **to** **see** **his** **face**. **He** **had** **several** **cuts** **on** **his** **cheeks** , **his** **eyes** **were** **red** **and** **swollen** **and** **blood** **oozed** **with** **a** **wide** **stream** **from** **his** **nose**.

”Oh my Someone... Crowley, dear, what happened?”

The demon curled his hands into fists so hard that he tore through skin. He looked straight in Aziraphale’s eyes. And he looked pissed.

”What happened?! WHAT HAPPENED?!”

He started hitting the angel’s chest repeatedly.

“Do you want to know what happened?! Please, let me indulge you! First, you tell me that we’ve never been friends, that you don’t even like me, then that you fucking chose fucking Heaven which treats you like shit, then when I’m apologising you still chose Heaven, but that’s understandable, I’m just a fucking demon of course! Then, suddenly, you leave me a fucking message that you know when the Antichrist is, but when I went to your bookshop it was on fucking fire! How the Heaven I could have known that it wasn’t Hellfire? HOW THE FUCKING HEAVEN?! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD! NOT DISCORPORATED! FUCKING DEAD! AND THE LAST THING I WOULD HAVE SAID TO YOU IS THAT I WOULDN’T THINK TWICE ABOUT YOU! So then I’m getting drunk and you, you fucking bastard, appear without a body in front of me AND DON’T EVEN GET THAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT YOU, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! THEN WE WOULD BOTH HAVE DIED IF NOT FOR ADAM! AND THEN BOTH HEAVEN AND HELL WANTS US DEAD! AND THE TRIALS WHICH WEREN’T EVEN PROPER FUCKING TRIALS BUT STRAIGHT UP EXECUTIONS AND THAT BASTARD GABRIEL TELLS ME, WELL YOU, “shut up and die already” AND DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING HARD IT WAS FOR ME NOT TO KILL HIM RIGHT AWAY?! So, YES, I DO HAVE BLOODY NIGHTMARES! ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW?!” At the end he was just yelling weakly through tears and hitting Aziraphale’s chest with all the strength he had left (which wasn’t much). 

The angel was quiet. He actually didn’t know what to say. He let his demon hit him all he wanted and held him up when his knees finally gave out. They sank to the floor, Crowley still sobbing, but now the angel was crying too. He started to brush his hand through Crowley’s auburn hair and repeating:

”I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.”

And then:

”I was such an idiot not to notice, you were never just a demon, you’re brilliant and wonderful and you don’t deserve an idiot like me, who didn’t even notice when his best friend was hurting so much. I’m so so sorry, I know I was awful and a bastard and you were absolutely right to call me that and a lot worse.”

Crowley held to the angel like he was an anchor in a storm. 

“Don’t say that,” he mumbled into Aziraphale’s suit.

”It’s true.”

”It’s not. Sorry for dropping this on you.”

At this point Aziraphale took the demon’s face in his hands and forced him to look at him.

”Don’t apologise. It’s me who should be apologising to you on my knees for what I said to you. So don’t you dare apologise. I was a damn coward for not realising it earlier and I’m so sorry for it, my dear.”

Crowley looked at him in wonder. There was a second of silence and Aziraphale was getting more and more nervous, when:

”Did you just say ‘damn’ or am I imagining things?”

Aziraphale was at loss of words for a while.

”Did you just-“

”You know, that was really moving, your speech, I mean. You calling yourself an idiot and a bastard? Not that you’re any of these, but wow. Well, maybe you are a bit of an idiot. But, yeah, if you ever pull that kind of shit again, I might for real go to Alpha Centaur-“

Crowley was cut off by something totally unexpected, something he gave up on hoping for around 1960s maybe. Aziraphale bend down and kissed him fiercely.

”Don’t. You. Dare.”

**And even God had to smile.**


End file.
